This week, ComScore came out with online metrics for May. Here are some of the highlights:

• 12 billion videos were viewed during the month of May in the US
• This represents an increase of 45% compared to a year ago
• Google sites (mostly YouTube) represents 34.58% of all videos watched
• There is a huge drop-off from there, with Fox Interactive (MySpace Video) coming in second with 6.4%
• Hulu breaks into the top 10 with 0.7% share (88 million videos)

Unfortunately, ComScore leaves a number of questions unanswered:

• How does ComScore define “video site”? Does this include sites that focus exclusively on video like YouTube, Hulu, MySpace Video, etc? Or does this include video that augments a site like newspapers, magazines, and other Internet sites (e.g. content, community, etc.)?
• What is a “video server network” and how is it different that a “video content site”? This is an important questions since ComScore explains that their metrics are for “video content sites” only and exclusive “video server networks.”
• If we understood how they are defining these terms, we could determine how much video consumption is from video oriented sites, and how much video consumption is coming from other web sites that increasingly include video. Basically, is video becoming ubiquitous across web sites across the Internet?
• How does the top 10 list change if ranked by total time spent watching video? I would be surprised if YouTube still wasn’t #1 by this measure, but would Hulu (with longer form content) still be #10?
• Where are sites like Veoh, MetaCafe, Heavy, and DailyMotion? These are all top 100 sites according to Alexa; much higher than Hulu; yet the don’t show up anywhere on this list. Is this because ComScore focused on viewers in the US?

My take away is that video metrics, as with many things related to online video today (e.g. advertising) there is a lot of confusion and ambiguity. While reports like these from ComScore are certainly helpful, they do not yet provide the comprehensive data necessary to bring clarity to this market.

In order for publishers, advertisers, etc., to make intelligent decisions about video they will need to look at available metrics from sources like ComScore and others, but they will also need to make some projections based on previous historical trends for how previous Internet trends evolved and matured.

Alex Castro